Wayne State University put its labor center’s website back online but apparently without the material the Mackinac Center for Public Policy had questioned as violating state law by advocating for union causes.

Ken Braun, the managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential, listed links to material on Wayne State’s Labor Studies Center in an article that explained why he put in a controversial Freedom of Information Act request. 

Wayne State responded by taking down the website earlier this week. It was back online Friday, but the questionable material could not be found.

Among the links removed were a guide for activists starting living wage campaigns, links on how to get information on your employer and a paper titled “Understanding and Preventing Privatization.”

Marick Masters, director of the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues and Labor@Wayne, has not returned messages seeking comment.

“The removal of material from the website indicates that university officials had the same concerns we did — that statements and documents on the site appeared to cross the line into political advocacy,”  said Michael Jahr, spokesman for the Mackinac Center, in an email. “It’s in the public interest for Wayne State officials to explain the findings of their investigation and the subsequent actions they’ve taken.”

To see the alleged activism pages, since removed, please click here.

The analogy goes like this: A family reduces its cable TV bill from $100 to $50 a month. The next day, they go out and buy a plasma screen TV for $1,000 and then say they “cut” their home entertainment budget at the end of the month by $50.

“After all,” said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “You could have spent $1,100 but only spent $1,050.”

Van Beek said that is the mindset of many public school administrators when they tell legislators and residents that they “cut” their budget by millions despite it growing larger.

The latest example is Bay City Public Schools.

Bay City’s Director of Finance and Accounting Sarah DuFresne, said the district has reduced operating expenditures by over $24.6 million since 2001, according to Mlive.com.

Bay City Superintendent Douglas Newcombe said that DuFresne’s data was accurate.

However, according to the Michigan Department of Education, Bay City’s general fund expenditures was $72.9 million in 2001. It is budgeted for $74.3 million in 2011.

That’s an increase of $1.4 million overall.

Newcombe said the increase was due to other rising costs throughout the district as well as the loss of federal dollars.

“The cuts offset increases in other places,” Newcombe said.

He said the budget would have been $24.6 million higher in 2011 without the cuts.

Van Beek has been critical of that way of describing cuts. Van Beek said if that was the case, any reduction in spending means the budget has been cut no matter how much the overall budget increases.

“Apparently in the world of public school accounting, not spending as much money as one might like or expect to is a ‘budget cut,’” Van Beek wrote in an email. “Using this logic, the only way districts wouldn’t make cuts is if they spent more on everything every year.”